If it isn't, it's a reveal from the synopsis at the start of FR and AATE (I don't have a copy of TROTE to check...). What exactly is the revelation? That the Elohim are against the Staff of Law more than they are opposed to white gold as a threat to the Arch of Time. Anyway...[The Elohim] cripple Covenant's mind, enclosing his consciousness in a kind of stasis, purportedly to protect the Earth from his growing power, but in fact to prevent him from carrying out Vain's unnamed purpose [emphasis added].
The Viles were "the surviving mind of the One Forest," the Forest that forgot the truth of the Earth, the forbidding power of orcrest and refusal, upon whom a shadow like unto that on the Elohim fell.
No one will refuse the end?The ending of all things is nigh,
Both grief and rue will pass away.
Both love and gratefulness; and why?
No one will stand to offer, 'Nay.'
And orcrest are pieces "of the One Rock which is the heart of the Earth" (TIW, 197).There is that in the granite glory of the world's heart which may not be uttered with [sic] words [emphasis added].
Now this is what I think happened. The One Forest was in communion with the One Rock at some point, but humanity's ravage broke that communion. The Colossus needs the lore of the Rock to work, so that lore's loss ends the Interdict. The One Forest itself loses its mind, which reappears in a sort of undead form as the Viles.
The Viles, living deep in the Earth as they do, relearn some of the truth of the Earth, the one word of truth (or treachery) even. The redeemed ur-viles, and the Waynhim, in turn relearn part of the Word of the Earth. What evidence is there of this?
- 1. They can translate Wildwood's runes (they haven't done it, but Linden seems totally certain that this translation is in their power). 2. They can locate Jeremiah when no one else except the Harrow, whose powers are based heavily on the Demondim-spawn's anyway, can do so. 3. The Viles were of "matchless" lore, transcending even the Elohim somehow. They had to know something pretty extreme to do that.
The Elohim know of this plan and how a new Staff of Law is part of it. They know Jeremiah and Anele are part of it, too, that the rhadhamaerl lore of orcrest, Earthpowerful like unto the Blood of the Earth (both distort the fabric of reality in their presence), contains within it some core aspect of the Word of the Earth. And Anele, reader of stone that he is, infuses Jeremiah with that knowledge by "reading" to Linden's son what is in fact the deepest of all kinds of rock, which includes part of the secret to suru-pa-maerl and/or therefore marrowmeld (either all parts of it, or enough for Jeremiah to have picked up the other pieces elsewhere).
The Giants of Seareach, like all Giants, know stone well. So conceivably they know, intuitively more likely than discursively (Anele would be an example of the latter), part of the Word of the Earth. I think they wrote that into Revelstone, seeing as that city represents the "granite glory of the world's heart." Jeremiah needs to know that glory somehow, because it is for him, together with Linden and others arguably, to solve the problem of the Interdict's failure.
I don't want to say "reawaken the Colossus" but more "make a new one." Infelice seems sure that Jeremiah is going to imprison the Elohim. But I think he's just going to use ancient knowledge related to orcrest and "refusal" to do to all of the surviving Elohim what was done to the one Appointed to the Interdict. And this new forbidding will be monumentally greater than the original.
I don't think this will stop the Worm of the World's End. (It's curious, though, that the Word of the Earth can be named the Worm of the Earth.) But maybe it'll slow it down, giving the protagonists enough time to figure out the rest (for presently they have "too little" of this).
Shows what I know about using the forum search here...